


Danse macabre, Op. 40

by seasonschange



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, no dlc spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasonschange/pseuds/seasonschange
Summary: "Uh-oh.""Uh-oh?""He... remembers.""He what?!""This one remembers us.""How-"Rosalind clamped her mouth shut, lips turning livid as Dewitt answered the question instead of her alter-ego.He stepped through the tear and landed a punch right across Robert's face."That's for Anna, you bastards!"





	1. Prologue

* * *

 

"He's never done that before."

Handkerchief in hand, Rosalind reached for Robert's bleeding nose and Robert tilted his head back, letting her wipe him clean.

The elements raged around them; the wind was howling, and the waves rose high, crashing into the cliff behind the pair, leaving not an inch of surface dry.

After his outburst, Dewitt had stomped away to the shore, where he'd been pacing back and forth like a caged animal, plotting his next course of action, no doubt.

It had better not involve any additional bodily harm on Robert's—or god forbid, Rosalind's—person.

Robert caught himself equating the harsh, tormented landscape to the state of Dewitt's psyche.

It did seem like a fitting metaphor.

"He hasn't, has he?" He snapped.

He wasn't angry; he was high-strung, struggling to connect the dots.

How could Booker Dewitt remember them, without Elizabeth by his side?

"It could be a miscalculation," Rosalind offered, wiping the last of his nosebleed.

"But we always return to the exact same spot. How could that be? And he remembers everything, even his own end!"

"Well, this _is_ our one hundred twenty-fourth attempt," Rosalind reasoned, "without taking into account all the times he failed to reach the city in one piece. There are worlds where the mind remembers a death that never occurred."

"But those were fragmented worlds that _she_ created. Why and when would she have created _this_ one?"

"But mostly, how."

"But mostly, how," Robert repeated, acquiescing. "When Booker Dewitt dies, so does Anna Dewitt."

"So do all of them."

"And yet we're still here. Their end was not ours," Robert concluded.

Rosalind stomped her foot.

That brought Robert's train of thoughts to a stuttering stop. Rosalind had never been one to display frustration, or any other sorts of cumbersome nonverbal behaviors.

That was Robert's thing. Not hers. Had never been.

"If the lighthouse still stands," she said, sounding almost _... impatient._  "Then so does Columbia. There's still worlds left where the merry-go-round keeps going, including this one."

"Back to square one. Or square none," Robert agreed, but he was careful this time. Gauging his alter-ego's reactions.

"It didn't work!" 

It was Dewitt's voice, carried by the wind.

Both Luteces turned to him.

Now that he'd appeared to have calmed down, Dewitt looked haggard. Like a man who'd just stumbled his way out of a bar, and didn't quite know what time of day or night it was.

Didn't quite remember how to tell the difference.

"It didn't work," he said again, but it was too quiet to hear. Robert only knew because he read the man's lips.

In a few, nervous strides, Dewitt made his way back to them. "It didn't work because it wasn't that day."

"Even so," Rosalind said, "the question remains: how could you remember?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Robert said, uncrossing his arms and waggling an exasperated finger in the air. "The question is how could _she_ have been wrong?! We may have been scattered across the possibility universe, but  _s_ _he_ could command it at will! We needed her to find the way to stop the cycle. To find the cluster where all paths trace back to, and put an end to any and every possibility of this madness. And she did!"

"She didn't." Dewitt insisted.

"Yes, she did."

"No, she _didn't!"_

Robert was taller than the other man.

But all the same, when Dewitt's voice turned thunderous, Robert felt compelled to take a preemptive step back, lest he got another taste of Dewitt's knuckles.

"What if—," Dewitt spoke with a hitch to his voice, so clearly out of his depth but still grasping for straws, "what if—what if she just didn't look far enough, or, or—"

"That simply isn't possible."

"It isn't," Robert agreed.

"Quantum superposition."

"There is no distance."

"All happens at the same time, same place. She saw all there was to see," Rosalind concluded. "Unless..."

"Unless?" Robert and Dewitt asked at the same time, then stared at each other in confusion.

Robert, at least, felt confused.

Dewitt looked about ready to faint.

"Unless... you're not the Booker who died that day."

"What? Then which one am I, lady?! I _remember_ dying! I remember... wanting to die," he added, quieter.

"Layers of memories of the same event," Rosalind mused, "but they all feel different, don't they? Maybe the tears have changed something. Changed _you_ , more specifically." She held her chin thoughtfully. "Do you remember something else about that day in the river, Mr Dewitt? Beside the priest, or your daughter? Is there _another_ possibility?"

"Well, I—I know I remember the river." Dewitt dropped his head in his hands. "And everyone else."

The Luteces waited patiently for the man to gather his thoughts.

"But there's also a time when I'm alone, because... I came to drown myself."

"Fascinating."

Robert glanced at Rosalind. "I think you mean 'preposterous'.  _He_ ," Robert pointed to Dewitt, ignoring the way the other man glared at the offensive gesture, "would be from another timeline? Another possibility she wouldn't have cared to take into account? Have you finally gone mad, Rosalind?"

"There is a possibility _our_ machine wasn't perfect."

Robert let his hand drop, and considered.

"Ours was the first and only ever created," he decided.

"And to assume Elizabeth Comstock, or Anna Dewitt, a complete success was never a given. It _is_ possible she, too, had her limitations. In the end, the only solution she foresaw was to kill her own creator."

"I suppose she could have been biased," Robert said, jumping naturally to the same conclusions as his alter-go.

Dewitt was glancing from one to the other, brow furrowed in confusion.

"I also remember selling off my baby to you," Dewitt's gruff drawl demanded their attention once more.

He gestured at the both of them as if he saw no difference between the pair. “Again!”

Robert grimaced. He'd always been the one, throughout the entire multiverse.

Rosalind nodded.

"Of course you did. And this is just another experiment set for failure right from the start," she made sure to throw Robert a meaningful look, never letting him forget who was responsible for their little 'experiments' as she liked to call them. "It barely matters that you remember," she continued, "as it is simply another variable."

"But maybe it does matter."

Rosalind turned to Robert, brow raised in surprise. "And how so?"

"Perhaps our little problem doesn't have to snowball into an avalanche of complications. We've been looking _so long_ for this opportunity, but we almost can't see it now that it's here! This is the first time we've encountered a Booker Dewitt who knows what he will become. And he's also a Booker Dewitt still relatively safe from his daughter's vengeance."

"Vengeance?!" Dewitt spluttered. His eyes had been dancing from one Lutece to another, struggling to keep up with the hectic thread of their conversation. "She didn't try to kill me—I mean, she _didn't_ _kill me_ out of vengeance! She—she loved me!"

"Yes, Mr Dewitt, she did. But your daughter, as omnipotent as she became, was still _just a girl_. A young girl who experienced the suffering of every possible version of herself, throughout infinite dimensions across space and time. And what hurt her the most was the knowledge that she suffered at the hands of her own father. She wanted vengeance more than she desired her own freedom."

"That makes no sense..."

"She killed you that day in the river," Rosalind explained.

"To destroy every single possible version of Comstock."

"Yeah, I got that, but—"

"You also visited the river where and when you didn't accept the baptism. When you _didn't_ turn to religion. Now, she didn't care for that world, did she?"

Dewitt rubbed his brow, visibly upset by the topic.

But they needed him to understand, and quick. Rosalind was a fatalist, but Robert was an idealist. He wanted to believe this wasn't just another insignificant variable. This was their chance to _finally_ make it right.

Wipe away their own bloody debt.

"She could have traveled before that event ever occurred," Robert continued. "If she hadn't wanted any versions of you to survive, she could have come back to the day of your birth, and smothered you in your crib."

"She wanted to keep the possible universes where you lived as Booker Dewitt. Where she had a family. That includes worlds where you, indeed, came to that river alone and took your own life. And worlds where you couldn't bring yourself to do it."

"Worlds where you maybe didn't drink."

"Or maybe just didn't gamble."

"Didn't have a daughter."

"Or simply didn't marry."

"Could barely scrape up money for rent."

"Didn't change your name to Zachary Hale Comstock."

"Didn't meet any scientists with revolutionary ideas but empty pockets."

Rosalind frowned as the words left her mouth.

So did Robert.

"This must be it," Rosalind breathed out in excitement.

"What is?" Dewitt asked, exasperation bleeding through his posture.

The man's eternal hostility was a constant Robert was almost happy to recognize. At last, something familiar!

Rosalind didn't seem to pay notice.

She was looking at Robert instead, straight into blue eyes so similar to hers. Because they were hers.

"Either the girl didn't see it," she continued.

"Or she knew. They all knew. And chose to watch Comstock die; all those he'd personally tortured came together to drown their creator."

"And to vanish, like they never were."

"But she must have known that she herself, in Columbia, was a constant."

"She only escaped to kill Comstock, not to stop the cycle. Because she couldn't. Not with those corrupted versions of Booker Dewitt."

"Rosalind turned back to Dewitt, and announced without preamble: "This time, you have to tell her to kill Lutece."

"All of them," Robert added.

He could hear the sadness in his own voice, and didn't try to mask it.

He glanced at Rosalind. He'd still hoped they would make it together. That perhaps they'd find a way to be returned to the structure of their own worlds.

Robert had grown tired of the drifting.

"You mean, find the moment in time when one of you meets... _me_ ," Dewitt spat the word, another testimony to this version of the man being one they could trust, "and kill them?"

"No," they said in unison.

"You didn't build Columbia," Rosalind said. "Because Comstock never happened."

"Lutece did," Robert said.

"I gave you the power to make a city fly. Then I created a machine for you, one that'd open up pathways to other worlds. You already know this. You remember."

"All we wanted was to sate an insatiable curiosity."

"Comstock wanted power."

"We wanted knowledge."

"The lighthouse is still here."

"This means some version of Columbia still exists."

"And it can only mean in this reality, we've met someone else."

"Someone crazy enough to believe in us, and support our research."

"So... there won't be any Father Comstock up there?" Dewitt seemed skeptical, thumb pointing at the night sky.

Robert shook his head.

"But I still gave you _my_ daughter? That makes no sense!"

"It's because she's a constant," Rosalind reminded him. "And as always, only you can reach her."

Dewitt glared at her, as if that was her fault.

_Preposterous._

"It had to be her," Robert said, and as expected, Dewitt's dark eyes turned to pierce him next.

"This one didn't want their own offspring. Our contraption showed them a different future. They wanted someone who could stabilize the tears. Someone they could hurt, could use, with no conscience."

"And we knew that someone."

"Something, somewhere in our research, pointed toward her and only her."

"It had to be her."

When they finally fell silent, Dewitt was breathing so hard Robert could almost hear him over the rain and the wind and the sea.

"You know what to do," Robert eventually said, opening his arms in a helpless gesture.

Again, a wave of sadness washed through him. And he felt the echo of that sadness in Rosalind, as well.

Dewitt's hands curled into fists.

He stood hunched over, no doubt plowing under the weight of all that he knew, and never should have known.

But there was also determination settling behind those hard green eyes.

_Oh, yes. We had to get you back, Mr Dewitt._

* * *

 

As the pair led him to the skiff, Dewitt remained silent and closed-off.

Unsurprisingly, he didn't help rowing.

“She will remember him,” Robert worried out loud, unable to stand the quiet. He never could. “The moment he destroys the syphon, she'll remember Comstock, and all the crimes he committed—”

“—And did not—”

“—commit.”

“What if she…”

“Then we move on to the next one, like we always do.”

“Yeah,” Dewitt growled from the other end of the skiff, “ _just_ leave me to die. It's not like it's the first time.”

Rosalind didn't even bother to look at the man.

“I liked him better when he didn't remember,” Robert decided.

* * *

 

Once they reached the dock, Dewitt took off without a backward glance for the Luteces.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

Everything felt so familiar.

From the smell of damp wood that permeated the dark, eerily quiet inside of the lighthouse, to the way the dying light of a few candles sent strange shadows dancing on the walls.

For a moment, Booker's body and mind fought to reconcile his true memories with experiences from alternate realities. He winced, vision going blurry and a headache building up at the back of his skull. Something liquid and hot flowed out his nose and coated his upper lip. 

Booker wiped the blood with the back of his hand.

There were murmurs coming from upstairs. Or maybe it was the wind.

Rubbing his temples, Booker began the slow and tiring climb.

* * *

 

_"Blimey!"_

_"Oh, don't be like that. It is but a little blood."_

_"A little bl_ — _you've turned this place into a proper slaughterhouse!"_

_"Are you quite done, darling?"_

_"I suppose I am. Do you need some help moving the... Ah, he'll be here, soon, anyway."_

As Booker rounded the corner of the stairway, he already knew who was waiting for him.

Or so he thought, until he took in the scenery. 

Rosalind Lutece, the petite woman with ginger hair and severe features, stood kneeling in the middle of a puddle of blood, next to the bodies of four men. Big, bulky men, with faces concealed behind bandannas and holsters for the guns they had been carrying.

She appeared to be in the process of hauling one of the dead bodies away from the rest of the pile, towards an open window. 

"What the hell," Booker bit throught clenched teeth.

He felt his stomach lurch. Even after everything he'd seen and done, death never got easier.

He just didn't throw up as much.

There was also another body, different from the others, propped up on a chair with a bag over his head and a bullet hole between the eyes. 

He remembered _that_ guy.

Not the others.

"Did you kill _all_ of them?" Was what he asked, impressed by his own ability to remain calm as he watched the woman abandon her heavy load and stand up to face him.

"There have never been so many before," she informed him.

"This is our first time facing this scenario," said a voice to Booker's left. "Some miscalculations were made."

Booker turned and squinted as he peered into the shadows, barely making out the silhouette of a man standing against the wall, as far as possible from the carnage.

"First times are always difficult," Lutece said.

"So you... shot the unlucky fella over there, too?" Booker pointed to the only body that looked like it had been staged for his benefit.

The bloody message, _"bring us the girl and wipe away the debt"_ was there as well. Still fresh.

"Yes," Rosalind said.

They had been playing him from the start, each time they'd brought him to this accursed place to die.

Booker's anger was quiet. Seething.

"They sent more," she said, "we weren't expecting them to send more."

"Perhaps they know."

"I'm starting to suspect that, too."

"We shouldn't linger."

Rosalind dusted off her dress, even though, Booker realized with a start, she was completely immaculate even after killing five men.

Though certainly with the help of her...  _brother?_

_Twin?_

_Alternate self?_

Booker had no idea what to call the other man. He knew the reason the pair looked like the spitting image of each other, and it gave him the creeps.

The British accent wasn't helping, either. He fucking hated the British.

"He seems in shock."

"I wager he's never seen a lady with such an indelicate disposition as yourself."

"I am a woman of the world, Robert. I know how to defend myself."

"And don't I know that."

Their chatter became incoherent babble to Booker's ears as he made himself focus and walk past the pair, intent on making it to the city before the end of the night. 

There was also the painful memory of Anna, in her crib, that kept coming back to him when he thought of Lutece.

Of Lutece taking her away. 

_The bastard._

That memory always lingered strongest in his mind, more than any other.

It had to be all the regret. 

In another world he could only faintly recall, he had changed his mind and ran after the man. And there, he had seen himself. Old and utterly corrupted, stealing away his own daughter and condemning her to a life of misery and solitude.

But what had  _he—_ the Booker of  _this_ universe—done?

He remembered running. And there was someone holding his baby girl. But that person had been veiled, their face hidden to him.

He could almost hear Anna crying.

As Booker began climbing the next leg of the staircase that led to the top, the room behind him fell completely silent.

* * *

 


End file.
